Problems Balancing Checking Account-Wrong Opening Balance or date range

I have not previously had problems balancing my checking account wis
Money 2004. Tonight when I went to do so, it gave a much different
opening balance then the closing balance from the previous bank
statement, when it balanced o.k. In fact, for some unknown reason, it
was a month behind, said it wanted to balance the statement of
10/31/04...which I dutifully did again, after correcting the opening
balance. That opening balance did not match any enf of month
balances, even though eveyrthing balanced o.k. previously on 10/31/04.
(This might be part of where things went wrong).

Then when I balanced 11/30/04 statement, it told me my starting
balance was incorrect, and that my account balance was off by 702.04.
When I accepted the suggestion to make an adjusment of this amount it
did it twice. One debit of 702.04 which it called "Starting Balance
Adjustment" and 1 credit of the same amount which it called account
adjustment, but both were dated 11/30/04, even though the starting
balance adjustment should have applied to the balance as of 11/1/04.
Of course these two bogus entries cancel each out. The net result as
of the last entry on 11/30/04 was to agree with the bank statement, as
it had the previous month, and maybe everything will be fine next
month. But why did it tell me the starting balance was wrong, when it
was satisfied with the same amount as the ending balance the month
before? It appears to me that it was attempting to balance a
statement beginning 11/30 and ending 11/30, and that perhaps it got
confused about what the last statement date was on which the account
was balanced. As I said, I know I had balanced the 10/31/04 statement
previously, but when I began my balancing act tonight it insistred
that was the date to it wanted balance, and the opening balance was
all wrong. That seems to be where it got messed up.

It did had RECONCILED all downloaded transactions after 11/30/04 up
through 12/8/04, which never happened before again suggesting it was
confused about what time period was being balanced.

Any ideas what went wrong? And if I need to do something before next
month to make sure no problems occur?

Thanks for any help.

Margie
Tue Feb 08 17:47:02 CST 2005

I am having the same type of problem with 2003. I have the correct beginning
balance, I have diligently reconciled every transaction for the last 4 months
with the paper statement, I know that what I have in the program and what the
bank shows on the statement should balance exactly. I continue to get the
error message that the program calculates my beginning statement balance
differetly than the statement balance on my paper statement. I have gone
through this every month for the past 4 months and am about ready to give up
on balancing "the easy way!" Ha!

Have you come up with any tricks or solutions to reseting the program to
recognize the beginning balance that is entered instead of calculated?

Thanks,



"Jim" wrote:

> I have not previously had problems balancing my checking account wis
> Money 2004. Tonight when I went to do so, it gave a much different
> opening balance then the closing balance from the previous bank
> statement, when it balanced o.k. In fact, for some unknown reason, it
> was a month behind, said it wanted to balance the statement of
> 10/31/04...which I dutifully did again, after correcting the opening
> balance. That opening balance did not match any enf of month
> balances, even though eveyrthing balanced o.k. previously on 10/31/04.
> (This might be part of where things went wrong).
>
> Then when I balanced 11/30/04 statement, it told me my starting
> balance was incorrect, and that my account balance was off by 702.04.
> When I accepted the suggestion to make an adjusment of this amount it
> did it twice. One debit of 702.04 which it called "Starting Balance
> Adjustment" and 1 credit of the same amount which it called account
> adjustment, but both were dated 11/30/04, even though the starting
> balance adjustment should have applied to the balance as of 11/1/04.
> Of course these two bogus entries cancel each out. The net result as
> of the last entry on 11/30/04 was to agree with the bank statement, as
> it had the previous month, and maybe everything will be fine next
> month. But why did it tell me the starting balance was wrong, when it
> was satisfied with the same amount as the ending balance the month
> before? It appears to me that it was attempting to balance a
> statement beginning 11/30 and ending 11/30, and that perhaps it got
> confused about what the last statement date was on which the account
> was balanced. As I said, I know I had balanced the 10/31/04 statement
> previously, but when I began my balancing act tonight it insistred
> that was the date to it wanted balance, and the opening balance was
> all wrong. That seems to be where it got messed up.
>
> It did had RECONCILED all downloaded transactions after 11/30/04 up
> through 12/8/04, which never happened before again suggesting it was
> confused about what time period was being balanced.
>
> Any ideas what went wrong? And if I need to do something before next
> month to make sure no problems occur?
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
>
>
>